6 minute read
From the Word
Photos used in this article are captured by Cleo Tay
The Good Soil and A Fruitful Heart
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Stanley Tay
When Circuit Breaker kicked in this year, my wife and younger daughter found themselves drawn to a new hobby that took up copious amounts of their leisure time at home: houseplants. A single two-leaf cutting from a friend quickly grew into 32 plants of varying sizes—plus a dedicated Instagram account!
One lesson they had to learn as novices was the vital role that soil plays in healthy plant growth. After experiencing numerous plant deaths, they realised the importance of having not just good soil but also the right type of soil. Talk to any plant enthusiast and he or she will tell you how critical it is to have a good potting mix to ensure root systems are well oxygenated. These lessons may seem novel for urban folks like us but they are probably common knowledge to people who live in an agrarian society. Every farmer understands how essential good soil is for good harvests and the importance of establishing the right type of soil conditions for crops to thrive.
Jesus lived in a world where agriculture was part of everyday life. Hence, He used illustrations from the agricultural world to convey important lessons. The parable of the sower is one such example. How do you convince your hearers of the importance of cultivating the right kind of heart to be able to receive the word of God well? You use the seed to symbolise the word of God and the soil to represent the human heart.
So, the Jewish hearers understood that God’s word (seed) cannot thus take root in unreceptive hearts (bad soil). Conversely, the word of God will produce fruits in a person’s life when it is sown in receptive hearts (good soil).
The parable of the sower is considered one of Jesus’ most wellknown parables. Robert Capon points out that all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew 13:1-23; Mark 1:1-20; Luke 8:4-15) accord this parable a star billing, as “not only do all three of them make it the introduction to the first deliberate collection of Jesus’ parables; they also devote a disproportionate amount of space to it and to the comments Jesus made in connection with it.”
Nonetheless, it is actually more accurate to label this story as the parable of the soils. The focus is more on the soil than the sower, and specifically, on how well the different soils, representing the various conditions of our heart, receive or reject the seed which is the word of Christ. As mentioned, two kinds of heart conditions are highlighted— unreceptive hearts as represented by the three types of bad soils, and receptive hearts as represented by the good soil.
Unreceptive Hearts
The first of the three types of bad soil represents the hardened heart, pointed out by Jesus in verses 4 and 19 of Matthew chapter 13. This kind of soil is found on pathways. Seeds sown here cannot take root but remain on the surface, often getting eaten by the birds. This soil is like a heart that is unresponsive to the word. A person with such a heart
can read or listen to God’s word but it is immediately forgotten due to disinterest or indifference. It goes in through one ear and out the other.
The second type of unreceptive heart is the shallow heart. In verses 5-6 and 20-21, Jesus likened it to those thin layers of soil that are often found on top of the thick layers of limestone common in Israel. Seeds sown here do grow but the plant dies easily under the hot sun because the roots cannot go deep to get water. Such soil represents a heart which is spiritually shallow. People with such hearts thrive when times are good. But because their faith is not based on the word of God, when trials or tribulations come their way, their faith gets shaken and they often end up giving up on God.
The third kind of unreceptive heart is the distracted heart. In verses 7 and 22, Jesus mentioned that seeds which fall among the thorns also sprout and produce plants but they cannot last because they get choked by the thorns. A heart like this kind of soil easily lets the distractions of life like worries, riches and pleasures compete with the word. These things cause the heart to become divided and crowded, eventually turning the hearers away from God and His word. An unreceptive heart can effectively prevent the word of God from going deep into one’s life. Such kind of hearts are either hardened by disinterest, or they are spiritually shallow, or they are easily distracted by worldliness. When the word does not take root, lives are not transformed, behaviour not changed and the mind not renewed. There is no growth in maturity and no fruits can be observed.
Fruitful Hearts
What kind of hearts can then receive the word of God, letting it take root and gradually bearing fruits? Jesus called this type of heart the good soil in verses 8 and 23, “Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold… this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit....” How then does one cultivate such a fruitful heart? The simple answer—regularly ‘eat’ the word.
Eating the word is a biblical term found for example in Jeremiah 15:16 and Ezekiel 3:3. It means the taking in of Scriptures, chewing over it, digesting and letting it become a part of us. Practically, this involves firstly, the cultivation of the discipline of reading the Bible—getting to know what is in the Bible and familiarising ourselves with its teachings, learning about who God says He is.
Secondly, eating the word also involves studying the word. There is much in the Bible that we do not understand. In addition to listening to good sermons, learn to read books or use commentaries and other resources that help you go deeper into the word. As Jerry Bridges said, “Reading the word gives us breath but studying it gives us depth.” Studying the word of God is hard work but absolutely necessary for our growth and maturity.
Finally, meditating on Scriptures. If you have read Psalms 1 or 119, you will find the word ‘meditate’ being used repeatedly. This is the process of enjoying, internalising and personalising the word. Friedrich von Hugel describes meditation akin to “letting a very slowly dissolving lozenge melt imperceptibly in your mouth.”
The whole process of reading, studying and meditating on God’s word is like putting a teabag into a cup of hot water. Reading is the first dip of the teabag. Studying the word is continuous dipping to allow more of the tea to be infused into the water. And when the teabag is immersed in the water long enough, it eventually gets the full taste of the tea. This represents the experience of meditating on Scripture so that it is stored in the heart.
In these uncertain times, God’s word serves as an anchor to keep us steady in our faith and provides us with a strong foundation to withstand whatever shaking we may experience. May we beseech God for a fruitful heart and do what we can to cultivate it—by learning to enjoy eating His word!
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ST JOHN'S - ST MARGARET'S CHURCH 30 DOVER AVE SINGAPORE 139790 Copyright @ St. John’s – St. Margaret’s Church, 2021 All rights reserved.
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